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 Editorials | At Issue | July 2006 
Protests Gather Steam in Support of Mexican Leftist
 Frank Jack Daniel - Reuters
| | A man looks at the final tally of votes on a public announcement poster placed outside a district office of the federal electoral institute in Mexico City July 12, 2006. (Tomas Bravo/Reuters) |
Several thousand Mexican leftists marched on the capital on Wednesday to protest what they say was vote fraud in a presidential election that has divided the nation between left and right.
The marchers, who walked from Mexico City electoral districts to a giant central square in small groups, said they would not back down unless electoral authorities accept leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador as the victor of the July 2 vote.
Official results show conservative Felipe Calderon won the election by 0.58 of a percentage point but Lopez Obrador has cried fraud and an electoral court now has until the start of September to decide who is the next president.
"I won the presidential election, I am more and more sure of that," Lopez Obrador said on Wednesday at a news conference where he played video footage he said showed polling stations where Calderon's votes were overcounted.
Lopez Obrador believes fraud and irregularities mean a nationwide vote-by-vote recount is the only way to settle doubts.
The leftist has called his supporters from around the country to start gathering in the capital as of Wednesday ahead of a huge march on Sunday to the Zocalo, one of the world's largest municipal squares.
"Andres Manuel won the election and they want to impose someone else -- we've had enough of fraudsters. We won't let the other one take office," protester Gloria Moran, 78, said from behind a pair of pink-tinted glasses.
The weekend demonstration will go down a central avenue, past international hotels and the U.S. Embassy.
STOCK CONCERNS
Calderon has already formed a team to oversee a smooth transition of power from fellow conservative President Vicente Fox.
Calderon denies fraud and says a vote-by-vote recount is not legally possible in Mexico. He urged the country on Tuesday to stay calm and warned his rival not to provoke violence.
Many Mexicans, as well as foreign investors, worry Lopez Obrador will not be able to control protests in his favor once he has called people onto the streets.
The Mexican stock market has been volatile since election day, with investors lurching between confidence that business-friendly Calderon will be made president and concerns about weeks of political instability.
On Wednesday, stocks were down 0.82 percent.
Despite a string of allegations by the leftist over irregularities in the vote count, campaign overspends and pro-Calderon bias among electoral authorities, the election was ruled free and fair by European Union observers.
Even so, many Mexicans are sensitive to suggestions of fraud, following generations of vote rigging under the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ruled the country for 71 years until knocked from power by President Vicente Fox in 2001.
Surveys carried out by Calderon's National Action Party showed that as many as 30 percent of Mexicans believe the election was fraudulent, party aides said.
More than 100,000 people turned out in the Zocalo last weekend to back Lopez Obrador, who was the capital's popular mayor until running for president. |
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